Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “Uncle Hengist was shouting at him just before you got here,” Ealstan said. “He thinks Sidroc’s flown out of his bush. Father hasn’t said anything that I know of; maybe he figures Sidroc is Hengist’s worry.”

  With practicality so cold-blooded it alarmed even him, Leofsig said, “Maybe he ought to join Plegmund’s Brigade. If he’s off marching on Cottbus, he can’t very well tell the Algarvian constables here that I broke out of the captives’ camp.”

  His brother looked horrified. Before Ealstan could say anything, Conberge came by in the courtyard, calling, “Supper’s ready.” Ealstan hurried off to the dining room with transparent relief. As Leofsig followed, he decided he was just as well pleased not to have that conversation go any further, too.

  Whatever the meat in the stew was, it wasn’t mutton. He knew it at the first bite. It might have been goat. For all he could prove, it might have been mule or camel or behemoth. It didn’t taste spoiled; he’d had to choke down spoiled meat in the army and in the captives’ camp. He wouldn’t have taken Felgilde to a fancy eatery to dine off this, but it helped fill the enormous hole in his belly.

  He kept glancing over at Sidroc. His cousin seemed as intent on eating as he was himself. Leofsig wondered if he really wanted Sidroc to join the Algarvians’ puppet force. If Sidroc joined of his own free will, what could be wrong with that?

  After a sip of wine, Leofsig s father turned to Uncle Hengist and remarked, “The news sheets talk about heavy fighting in the west.”

  “Aye, Hestan, they do,” Hengist said. Neither of them looked at Sidroc. Hestan was less ostentatious about not looking at him than Hengist was. Up until today, Hengist would probably have added some comment about how the Algarvians were still moving forward in spite of the hard fighting. Now he just nodded, still not looking at his son. He wanted Sidroc to think about what hard fighting meant. The trouble with that was, Sidroc had never experienced it. Leofsig, who had, hoped he never did again.

  In a musing voice, Hestan went on, “Heavy fighting’s bound to mean a lot of men dead, a lot of men hurt.”

  “Aye,” Hengist said again. Again, he said no more. A couple of days before, things would have been different, sure enough.

  Sidroc spoke up: “A lot of Unkerlanters stomped down into the mud, too. You’d best believe that.” He glowered at Hestan, as if defying him to disagree.

  But Leofsig’s father only nodded. “Oh, no doubt. Still, would King Mezentio want Forthwegians to do his fighting for him if he weren’t running low on redheads?”

  “If we don’t show we can fight, how will we ever get our kingdom back?” Sidroc said. “If you ask me, that’s what Plegmund’s Brigade is all about.”

  Now no one else at the table wanted to look toward Sidroc. “Fighting is all very well,” Leofsig said at last, “but you have to remember for whom you’re fighting and against whom you ought to be fighting.” He didn’t see how he could put it any more plainly than that.

  Ealstan found a way. Very quietly, he asked, “Cousin, who killed your mother? Was it Swemmel’s men or Mezentio’s?”

  Uncle Hengist drew in a sharp breath. Sidroc stared. In spite of everything he could do--and he fought hard--his face began to work. His eyes screwed shut. He let out a great sob. Tears poured down his cheeks. “Curse you, Ealstan!” he shouted in a grief-choked voice. “Powers below eat you, starting at the toes!” He sprang to his feet and ran blindly from the room. A moment later, the door to the bedchamber he shared with his father slammed. In the silence enveloping the table, Leofsig could hear his weeping even through the thick oak portal.

  Leofsig leaned toward Ealstan and murmured, “That was well done.”

  “Aye, lad, it was,” Uncle Hengist said. He shook himself. “Sometimes we lose track of what matters. You did right to remind Sidroc--and me, too, I’ll own.”

  “Did I?” Ealstan sounded not at all convinced.

  “Aye, son, you did,” Hestan said. Elfryth and Conberge also nodded.

  Not even his family’s reassurance seemed to persuade Ealstan. “Well, it’s done, and I can’t change it,” he said with a sigh. “I just hope Sidroc won’t hate me in the morning the way he does now.”

  He was looking at Leofsig. Leofsig started to ask why it mattered what Sidroc thought. But that answered itself. If Sidroc decided he really hated Ealstan, he was liable to decide he really hated Leofsig, too. Even if he also hated the Algarvians, who could guess what he might do in such a state? “I hope he won’t, too,” Leofsig said.

  Six

  Ealstan ate his porridge and gulped down his morning cup of wine. He looked across the table at Sidroc as he might have looked at an egg that had fallen from below a dragon’s belly but failed to burst. Sidroc ate stolidly, eyes down on his bowl. At last, Ealstan had to speak: “Come on. You know they’ll thrash us if we’re late.”

  Sidroc didn’t say anything to that, not at first, Ealstan cursed under his breath. He stirred in his seat, ready to head for his first class without his cousin. Maybe Sidroc doesn’t care if they break a switch on his back. I do. But, just as he was gathering himself to go, Sidroc said, “I’m ready,” and got up himself.

  They walked along in silence for a while. Every time Ealstan spied the broadsheet proclaiming Plegmund’s Brigade, he pretended he hadn’t. Sidroc must have seen the broadsheets, too, but he didn’t say anything about them. He strode toward the school with a set expression on his face that Ealstan didn’t like.

  They had to pause to let a couple of companies of Algarvian soldiers march past along a cross street. “Remember how, the day the Duke of Bari died, we had to wait for our own cavalrymen?” Ealstan asked. “That spilled the chamber pot into the soup, all right.”

  “We did, didn’t we?” Sidroc said. By the wondering look in his eye, he’d forgotten till Ealstan reminded him. Then he scowled again. “And a whole lot of good our cavalrymen did us, too. Fighting beside them”--he pointed to the Algarvians--”that’d be something. They’re winners.”

  “Remember what my father said,” Ealstan answered. “If they were doing as well as all that, they wouldn’t need the likes of us to help them.”

  Sidroc had his sneer back. “If your father were half as smart as he thinks he is, he’d be twice as smart as he really is. He knows numbers, so he thinks he knows everything. He doesn’t, you hear me?”

  “I hear a lot of wind.” Ealstan wanted to punch his cousin. If he did, though, what would Sidroc do? Getting into a brawl was one thing when all they could do was beat on each other. It was something else again when Sidroc could betray Leofsig to the Algarvians--and Ealstan’s father with him. Ealstan’s eyes slid toward Sidroc again. If I ever get the chance, I’ll knock out one of your teeth for every time I’ve had to hold back. Then you can spend the rest of your days sipping supper through a straw.

  They passed a couple of mushrooms pushing up through a gap between a couple of the slates of the sidewalk. As any Forthwegian--or, for that matter, any Kaunian who lived in Forthweg--would have done, Ealstan slowed to eye them. “They’re just scrawny little worthless toadstools,” Sidroc said. “Like you.”

  “If you are one, you know one,” Ealstan retorted. Boys had probably been saying that to one another since the days of the Kaunian Empire. One glance at the mushrooms, though, told him that, but for the insult, Sidroc was right. He said, “Pretty soon, the ones worth having will start sprouting.”

  “That’s so, and we’ll all go off to the fields and the woods with baskets.” Sidroc leered. “And maybe you’ll come home with that Kaunian wench’s basket again--or maybe you’ll stick your mushroom in her basket.” He guffawed.

  One more tooth you’ll lose some day, Sidroc, Ealstan thought. Aloud, he said, “She’s not like that, so why don’t you drag your mind out of the latrine?” He did hope he would see Vanai again. And if she turned out to be a little bit--only the tiniest bit, he assured himself--like that, he didn’t think he’d mind.

  By then, they were very close to the s
chool. Ealstan braced himself for another day of meaningless lessons. Putting up with his masters, though, would be a pleasure next to putting up with Sidroc.

  He endured the boredom. When called on to recite, he recited. He’d dutifully memorized all four assigned verses of the rather treacly poem from two hundred years before, and delivered the first one without a bobble. Sidroc got called on for the third verse, made a hash of it, and got his back striped. “Curse it,” he said as they went on to their next class, “I knew the first verse. Why didn’t I get chosen in your place?”

  “Just luck,” Ealstan answered. He’d known the third verse as well as the first, so he wouldn’t have minded getting called in Sidroc’s place. With his cousin feeling abused and put upon, he decided not to mention that.

  Sidroc got through the rest of the day without any more beatings, which left him in a somewhat better mood as Ealstan and he headed home. Ealstan, on the other hand, felt gloomier than he had in a while. It must have shown on his face like a fire in the night, for Sidroc--hardly the most perceptive fellow ever born--asked him, “Somebody go and steal your last bite of bread?”

  “No,” Ealstan said, though the clichéd question for What’s wrong? had taken on a new and literal meaning in these hungry times in Gromheort. His wave encompassed the whole battered city. “It’s just that--I don’t know--everything looks so shabby and broken and gray. I’ve been thinking about how things were that day when we saw the Forthwegian cavalry and how they are now, and I keep wondering how anybody stands it.”

  “What else can we do?” Sidroc said. They walked on a little farther. Sidroc kicked a small stone out of the way. As he watched it spin off, he went on,

  “Maybe that’s one of the reasons Plegmund’s Brigade doesn’t look so bad to me. It would get me away from--this.” His wave was as all-embracing as Ealstan’s had been.

  Ealstan found himself too surprised to answer. He hadn’t imagined Sidroc could look so keenly at himself. He also hadn’t imagined his cousin might have such a sensible-seeming reason for thinking about fighting on King Mezentio’s side. As far as Ealstan was concerned, Plegmund’s Brigade remained the wrong answer, but now, at least, he understood the question Sidroc was asking. How can I escape? had crossed his own mind, too, many times.

  An Algarvian constable threw up his hands to stop pedestrians and carts and riders. “Halting!” he shouted in halting Forthwegian.

  “We’ve got stuck going to and from today,” Sidroc grumbled, sounding more like his usual self. Ealstan nodded. He hadn’t been happy about waiting for his own kingdom’s soldiers; he was far less happy about having to wait for the conqueror’s troopers.

  But this procession held only a few Algarvians: guards, sticks at the ready. Most of the men who flowed past the intersection where Ealstan and Sidroc stood were Unkerlanter captives. As far as looks went, there was little to distinguish them from Forthwegians: they were most of them dark and stocky and hook-nosed. And their beards were growing out, which made them look even more like Ealstan’s people.

  Sidroc shook his fist at them. “Now you know what it’s like to have your kingdom overrun, you thieves!” he shouted. Some of the Unkerlanters looked at him as if they understood. They might have; the northeastern dialects of their language weren’t far from Forthwegian.

  Most of them, though, kept shambling on. Their stubbly cheeks were hollow, their eyes blank. They’d endured--how much? However much it was, they would have to endure more. “What do you suppose the redheads will do with them--to them?” Ealstan asked.

  “Who cares, the stinking backstabbers?” his cousin answered. “As far as I’m concerned, the Algarvians can cut their throats to make sticks or work whatever other magic with their life energy they care to.” He shook his fist at the Unkerlanter captives.

  “They won’t do that,” Ealstan said. “If they do, the Unkerlanters will start cutting the throats of their Algarvian captives, and then where will we be? Back in the red days after the Kaunian Empire fell, that’s where.”

  “If you ask me, the Unkerlanters deserve it.” Sidroc drew his thumb across his own throat. Ealstan started to say something. Before he could, Sidroc went on, “If you ask me, the redheads deserve it, too. Powers below eat both sides.”

  Ealstan pointed frantically toward the Algarvian constable. The redhead stood so close to them, he couldn’t have helped hearing. But he didn’t speak enough Forthwegian to understand what they were saying. The last few Unkerlanter captives tramped past, and the last couple of Algarvian guards. The constable gave a sweeping wave, as if he were a noble graciously granting peasants a boon. Along with the rest of the Forthwegians who’d been waiting for the procession to pass, Ealstan and Sidroc crossed the street.

  “Why do you keep going on about Plegmund’s Brigade if that’s the way you feel about the redheads?” Ealstan asked his cousin.

  Sidroc said, “I wouldn’t be joining for the Algarvians. I’d be joining for me.”

  “I can’t see the difference,” Ealstan said. “I bet you King Mezentio wouldn’t be able to see the difference, either.”

  “That’s because you’re a blockhead,” Sidroc said. “If you want to tell me Mezentio’s a blockhead, too, I won’t argue with you.”

  “I know what I’ll tell you,” Ealstan said. “I’ll tell you I’m not the biggest blockhead here, that’s what.”

  Sidroc mimed throwing a punch. Ealstan mimed ducking. They both laughed. They were still insulting each other, but not the way they had been lately. This was just schoolboys’ foolish talk, not the sort of business that could poison things between them for years to come. A little stretch of childishness felt good.

  They hadn’t stopped tossing insults around, or laughing about it, by the time they knocked on the door of Ealstan’s house. Conberge unbarred it and stood in the entry hall looking from one of them to the other. “I think both of you stopped in a tavern on the way here,” she said, and Ealstan couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not.

  Sidroc stepped up and breathed in her face. “No wine,” he declared. “No ale, either.”

  Conberge mimed reeling away. “No, but when was the last time you cleaned your teeth?” she said. Considering how little love she bore for Sidroc, her voice should have had an edge. Had it borne one, it would have wrecked the moment like a bursting egg. Somehow, it didn’t. Sidroc breathed in Ealstan’s face. Not about to let his sister outdo him, Ealstan mimed falling over dead. He and Sidroc were laughing so hard, they had to hold each other up. Conberge could no more help laughing, too, than she could help breathing.

  A door opened across the street. A neighbor stared at the three of them, wondering what could be so funny in grim, occupied Gromheort. Ealstan wondered, too, but not enough to stop laughing. Maybe part of him sensed that this little glowing stretch couldn’t last long no matter what.

  The neighbor closed the door, shaking her head. That was funny, too. But then Conberge, who hadn’t been quite so immersed in giggles as Ealstan and Sidroc, said, “The two of you are later than you should be if you came straight home.”

  “We did,” Ealstan said. “Really. We had to wait for a bunch of Unkerlanter captives to shuffle through the middle of town. I suppose they’re on the way to a camp.” As soon as he’d spoken, he knew he’d punctured the magic. Captives and camps didn’t go with heedless laughter.

  From out of the south, a cloud rolled across the sun, plunging the street into gloom. Ealstan wondered how he could have let himself be so silly, even if only for a little while. By Sidroc’s expression, the same thought was in his mind. Ealstan sighed. “Come on, let’s go in,” he said. “It’s getting chilly out here.”

  Bembo did not like marching along a road roughly paved with cobblestones and other bits of rubble, especially not when the cobbles and other bits of rubble were slick and wet with last night’s rain. “If I slip and fall, I’m liable to break my ankle,” the Algarvian constable complained.

  “Maybe you’ll break your neck inst
ead,” Oraste said helpfully. “That would make you shut up, anyhow.”

  “Both of you can shut up,” Sergeant Pesaro growled. “We have a job to do, and we’re going to do it, that’s all. End of story.” He tramped along, full of determination, his big belly bouncing ahead of him at every stride, and set a good pace for the squad of constables he led.

  In a low voice, Bembo told Oraste, “I’ve got silver that says he’ll be done in long before we get to this Oyngestun place.”

  “I know you’re a fool,” the other constable answered, “but I didn’t know you thought I was one, too. I’m not stupid enough to throw my money away on a bet like that.”

  They tramped past fields and almond and olive groves and little stands of woods. Here and there, Bembo saw Forthwegians and Kaunians, sometimes in small groups but more often alone, examining the ground and occasionally digging. “What are they doing?” he asked.

  “Gathering mushrooms.” Pesaro rolled his eyes. “They eat them.”

  “That’s disgusting.” Bembo stuck out his tongue and made a horrible face. None of the other constables argued with him. After a moment, he added, “It’s liable to be dangerous, too--to us, I mean. They could be sneaking around doing anything at all while they’re pretending to go after mushrooms.”

  Pesaro nodded, then shrugged. “I know, but what can you do? The soldiers say these whoresons’d revolt if we tried to keep ‘em inside their towns this time of year. We’re stuck with a little trouble--I hope it’s a little trouble--but we stay out of big trouble. And we can’t afford big trouble here right now. We’ve got too much farther west.”

  “Ah.” Trades like that made sense to Bembo. They were part of a constable’s life. “Maybe we ought to make ‘em pay to go out and hunt the cursed things, the way you get a free one from a floozy now and then so you won’t haul her in.”

  Some sergeant would have pitched a fit to hear something like that. Pesaro only nodded again. “Not a half bad idea. Maybe we ought to pass it on up the line. Anything we can squeeze out of this miserable place puts us that much further ahead of the game.” He walked on for another few paces, then took off his hat and wiped at his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “Long, miserable march.” Bembo gave Oraste an I-told-you-so look. Oraste ignored him. Pesaro went on, “This big, heavy stick doesn’t make things any easier, either.”